On the eighth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me
eight nosy parkers
[Title] Knowledge is Power
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Matsuda's pretty nosy, but he can admit it.
Matsuda knows he's kind of nosy.
Well, okay, but he wouldn’t call it that. He’s not, like, the kind of person who looks at other people’s phones if they’re out of the room, or...
All right, he has been known to listen at doors but only in pursuit of evidence. Only for the sake of a case. He hasn’t eavesdropped on private conversations for non-professional reasons since he was a kid.
And yeah, he probably does ask too many personal questions, but that’s not… that’s not because he’s trying to get information out of people. He just talks and he talks about stuff that interests him and a lot of the time he does want to know what other people are thinking or who they fancy or what mistakes they made because then he’ll feel he’s the same as them. Sometimes he feels like everyone he spends time with these days, their heads are nothing but a really neat filing system inside so they can just put away all the stuff left over from school or college or a really awkward date. Whereas with him everything's still lying all over his mind.
But if he asks and someone tells him to back off, he will! Okay, with some people he might laugh at them a little if they're really grouchy or they clearly have an embarrassing secret, but he doesn’t want to make people feel bad.
Still.
If pushed - and this would only be by someone smart and kind of scary, like Ryuzaki - if pushed, he’d probably admit he doesn’t just enjoy hearing other people talking like he thinks. He likes knowing stuff, too. People like Ryuzaki, and Raito, and the Chief, really smart people who are amazing at solving crimes, they can sum people up in a few sentences and somehow it makes everything make sense. Matsuda would like to be the one to whom everything makes sense, and knowing who people are and what they're thinking is the only way he can see to ever become that.
Which, okay, is nosiness. But no one around him is as interested in him as he is in them, so he figures he can keep it a secret.
[Title] Counter Culture
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Mew likes the chance to spy.
One of the best things about being a rudie, in Mew's opinion, is the chance to snoop.
“Really?” Gum says, giving her a what look as she sprays a brisk line of white paint across the sunny concrete wall. “Like, not the catching sweet air, or the sticking it to the man, or the not having to wear a uniform all day? It's watching the rat race?”
Mew sticks out her tongue. “Hey, how many times've you jumped onto a roof in Kogane-cho and heard someone having a massive row with their boyfriend? It's like Jerry Springer live.”
“I once jumped onto a roof in Kogane-cho and heard someone having a massive something else from her boyfriend. House was shaking. I nearly fell off the roof.”
“Um, ew. Not that kind of snooping. Just...” She stops, frowns. The words twist away from her, so she carries on painting. She means just that she can sit on someone's roof and hear 'em talking, even if she can't hear what's being said. She can grind along guttering and glance in at people's studies and offices and kitchens, and see someone making coffee or whispering a secret, or on their computer typing up something she knows nothing about. She can be tagging up the billboard above the cinema in Genkijomae Square and right below her feet are there'll be a group of friends chatting about how they liked the movie.
“I dunno. You can watch people and they feel like they're just like you, you know? Like they're all different underneath too.”
“Yeah, I don't get that,” Gum said, skating back a little, tilting her head to study the paint job. “I'm more about the having skates lets me run the hell away. People do my head in.”
Mew doesn't say how that's the other part of it, that before she had skates and the guts to express herself through criminal activity she just watched people and it felt like most of 'em weren't like her at all. Now, when she can get through large parts of the city without having to touch the ground, she can look at the others all around her without feeling she can't breathe.
[Title] Another Albion
[Rating] G
[Fandom] Merlin / classic!Who
[Notes/Summary] Prompted by sabethea, who asked for Merlin as the Doctor's companion.
Back in the TARDIS, Merlin leans over and tries to catch his breath over the groaning and shrieking as the Doctor's ship starts to fade away.
“You know,” he says, “I think I've done more running since I met you than I had in my whole life beforehand.”
The Doctor isn't listening - or is choosing not to hear - running around the centre of the TARDIS, pressing parts of it, looking at flickering lights. And as usual, while Merlin is covered in grime and dust from the dash down the hillside, the Doctor's cream-white clothes are unmarked and he even still has the hat. Merlin asked him once if it was magic. Nonsense, the Doctor said. Keeping a firm grip on one's hat has nothing to do with magic. It's simply common sense.
Merlin doesn't like talking about magic around the Doctor. Partly it's habit from years of not talking about magic to the wrong people. Partly...
The Doctor travels. That was why Merlin agreed to go along with him. He would have gone with anyone who had offered to take him somewhere else, away from Camelot, away from all the death. The fact that the Doctor can take you further away than probably anyone else in the world was an unexpected bit of luck.
The fact that the places the Doctor seems to go always involve running and strange beings and magic that Merlin has never even dreamt of is... well, it isn't luck exactly, Merlin thinks he'd rather like to experience a quiet life, but -
He thinks of Camelot and the years he spent there and every memory hurts. He tries to think of himself apart from Camelot, without Camelot, without Arthur, and he can't. And then they open the doors of the TARDIS and he sees people who've never heard Arthur's name. Once or twice the Doctor has pointed to the sky, to one tiny spark of light, and said, “There, that's your planet - second to the left.” When that happens, Merlin can almost believe the world - the world beyond the world - is big enough for him to live forever in it.
They open the doors of the TARDIS and they step out into places that he doesn't have the words to describe. People doing things that he would call magic and everyone does them and no one blinks. People he can scare if he unleashes his power and people who laugh and throw it back at him. People he didn't originally realise were people, that he thought were beasts, with fur or tusks or fangs. People who've seen the same things as him. People who understand why, afterwards, you might want to bury yourself in the lives of others.
The Doctor watches it all as if nothing can surprise him. Sometimes Merlin wants to tell him everything and hear him make sense of it. The Doctor can make sense of anything. But something always stops him. He's spent a lot of time being the one watching, the one trying to make things better even if no one realises it. He is pretty sure the Doctor's been doing that much longer. And is probably much better at it. The Doctor would have found a way to save Arthur, whatever destiny said.
“Where are we going now?” he says. “And is it going to involve more running?”
“You shouldn't develop an aversion to exercise,” the Doctor says. “It's unhealthy.”
Merlin sighs. “You mean, yes, it's going to involve more running. Can you narrow it down at all?”
They land with a jolt as if they've been set down by a giant hand. The Doctor studies one of the many devices in front of him, proclaims, “Seas of crystal. Three moons. Mosquito problems,” and strides towards the door. Merlin follows, and, as usual, his breath catches as the door is pulled open. That first glimpse of something so different is always worth it. As long as he stays the one watching.
[Title] Sizing Up the Competition
[Rating] PG-13
[Fandom] Battle Royale (manga)
[Notes/Summary] Shogo Kawada watches the rest of Class B, even though he didn't intend to.
Shogo figured his new classmates would be so much wallpaper to him; after all, he'd managed to gun down a large chunk of his previous junior high class, even some of the ones he'd grown up on the same street as, even the one who'd meant everything... so why would you spend weeks developing attachments to a new lot when you knew what was going to happen?
But he finds himself noticing them anyway. Keeping an ear open. Watching the ties of friendship, love or lust, bitter rivalry threading themselves across the classroom. And every so often, when his mind's wandering, he catches himself thinking he's gonna crack in the first hour or she's cannon fodder or (less often) they'd better watch out for her, anyone can see she'll be playing before they even say Go or he could actually stand a chance, he's got some decent moves. It's pretty sick, but he's figuring, by this point, that he's pretty sick, and it'd suck to get gunned down on the first day by someone he underestimated. So he keeps watching. And watching gives him something to do. The last thing he needs is for his thoughts to wander any further.
[Title] Bunking Together
[Fandom] new!Who / classic!Who
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Amy and Rory, and Jamie and Zoe, compare notes. Prompted by sabethea: "The Doctor - blighting sex lives since ???"
Trapped in a cave-in, with nothing else to do but wait until the Doctor - the Doctors - find them, Amy elects to make conversation. And quite frankly, if they might be all going to die, she doesn't see the point of wasting time not being nosy.
“So,” she says, into the dark, stuffy air, “You two are... together?”
She can practically hear Jamie blush, but Zoe says brightly, “If you mean are we sexually intimate, you're quite right. Jamie is a very good-looking young man and I find our cultural differences extremely interesting, too -”
“Zoe, she asked if we were sweethearts,” Jamie mutters. “She didn't need the... details.”
From Amy's other side, Rory clears his throat, and says, “Not that I'm asking for more... details, but... okay, does yours have the... bunk bed thing?”
A puzzled pause.
“I don't think so,” Zoe says. “Remind me, is that the ones with the ladder or the ones which walk around at night?”
“The... the ones with the ladder,” Amy says after a second's appalled horror at the thought of the other option.
“You have beds with ladders where you come from?” Jamie says. “Are they so high you can't get into them? I've heard rich folks have beds with steps to climb into, but... that shouldn't be a problem for, ah, for...”
A few moments' digression follow while they clarify the definition of a bunk bed.
“Oh, no,” Zoe says. “Ours hasn't noticed we sleep in the same room now, as far as I can tell. Not that I think he would mind. No, now I think about it, he has noticed. He asked me why on earth I had moved into Jamie's room and wouldn't the snoring keep me awake.Tiredness can kill, he reminded me.”
“Ours wasn't so bad, really,” Amy says. “I made a... firm request and he listened to it. No more bunk beds.”
“No,” Rory said. “A bed big enough for both of us, raised six foot off the ground on ladders. One day I'm going to forget that detail and break a leg falling out of it.”
“I think it's yours has seen too much more,” Jamie says. “He's getting too many ideas. And he had enough of those already.”
“Oh, well.” Zoe is standing up; they can hear the scatter of stones. “None of us are travelling with them for sexual purposes, are we? Perhaps we should keep them away from studying any more furniture, though. We've all got quite enough to contend with as it is.”
[Title] Constants
[Fandom] Akira
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Kaneda likes finding out about people. Prompted by herrdeath, who asked for Kaneda/Tetsuo pre-canon friendship.
Kaneda isn't exactly a nosy parker but he likes finding out about people. It makes you look smart if you know who people are, and it's often kind of good to know what they'll do. Like you don't wanna end up in a room alone with this kid, or you know that one will do your homework for you if you get him sweets. This teacher won't notice if you're talking, while that one will throw chalk at you and yell, but nothing else, and another one will make you stay behind after class and do extra cleaning duty.
So he's looking round the door when Ms Anno brings this new kid down the corridor. Same age as Kaneda, good, there are too many kids much bigger than him. Looking sad, looking really sad. Kaneda's not sure about the sad. He's not very good at making people not be sad and mostly he gets yelled at for it when he was only trying to help. Some of the big kids are saying this boy's mum and dad just left, just went away and never came back, but Kaneda's not sure he believes it and he doesn't really care anyway, who cares about not having a mum and dad?
But he starts keeping an eye out for the new kid because no one else is, everyone else says he looks like a loser or stupid, and Kaneda wants to know if he really is. So, on the day the mean kids start knocking the new boy around in the playground, Kaneda is there, watching from behind the jungle gym, and when the others are gone, he finds the broken robot toy, goes to give it back.
Kaneda's had friends before, course he has, but not like one best friend. Tetsuo's his best friend even though Tetsuo is kind of scaredy sometimes and cries a lot. Kaneda is okay with that because he always knows how to fix things. Also, Tetsuo thinks Kaneda's really smart the way he knows stuff and can come up with ideas. Not many people think Kaneda's smart.
Kaneda likes finding out about people, but as he gets older, a lot of them are kind of boring. Boring and all the same, all giving him dirty looks and acting like wanting to have fun is a massive crime. Tetsuo isn't boring. Tetsuo's just always there. If Kaneda thinks about it at all, he thinks he knows all there is to know about Tetsuo.
Much later, he realises how wrong he is, but it's too late by that point.
[Title] What I Never Do
[Fandom] Akira (movie)
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Kaori is never nosy. Except this time. Prompted by herrdeath, who requested some Tetsuo/Kaori.
Kaori is never nosy. Never. If people think you're snooping then, at best, they yell at you and order you to butt out of their business.
Kaori can't stop wondering about Tetsuo Shima. Sitting in the dorm with her elbows on the windowsill, trying to spot him among the kids playing football or shoving each other over. When she does spot him, in the far corner, drawing with chalk on the tarmac, she feels as shy as if he knows she's looking. She's all red and covering her mouth even though there's no one else here.
Kaori never asks anyone questions unless she's supposed to.
Kaori takes a deep breath and at dinner she says to the girl next to her who is talking about the boys, Do you know Tetsuo Shima? And the girl rolls her eyes and says, God, he's such a dork. Kaneda's all right - I mean he's up himself but he's all right - but Tetsuo acts like a freakin' little kid. Kaori has no idea how to stop being a little kid herself, so it's like someone's actually said, He's been asking about you too.
Kaori likes it best when she can be on her own, in one of the empty classrooms or in the dorm.
Kaori goes outside at lunchtime and stands by the chain-link fence. She puts her fingers through the squares as if she's going to start climbing. She doesn't start climbing, but she sees Tetsuo on the other side, leaning against the wall, watching the kids like she watches. Like he understands being scared. He feels her eyes on him, looks round.
Kaori is too shy to even look at boys.
Kaori smiles, digging her fingers into the chain-link so she can pretend her hands aren't shaking. After a few moments, Tetsuo slowly smiles back.
[Title] Tokyo Street View
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Combo can't get over how different Tokyo is.
Japan’s so different from the US but in a way like you don’t notice unless you’re looking - like, if you sleepwalk through it you feel you're somewhere you know, but once you start focusing on the details you realise you're the other side of the world. So, Combo’s looking. That’s tiring him out even more’n the jet lag. In Grind City he’d go ‘bout the day with it all round him like always and you only took notice when something was off. Like ugly new posters up on walls. Like psychos in suits trying to kill you.
Japan - well, Tokyo, anyway - every sign’s a picture. There’s music and chimes in the corner of his hearing every other step. People talking and it's like stones or marbles clatterin’ everywhere, he’s not gettin’ a word. Even places like Baskin-Robbins and McDonalds, you see the logo but then you see the menu or the labels on food and it’s all squares and lines. Like you're dreaming, or you forgot how to read.
“Close your mouth, you’ll get flies,” Cube says, prodding him in the arm.
“C’mon, kid, this is blowing my mind! Plus, they ain’t exactly gonna think I’m from round here.”
A bunch of schoolgirls in sailor suits walk past, chattering, looking like paper cutout schoolgirls, like world cinema DVD covers.
“We need to stop playing tourist and find these GGs. Don’t fall for it, Combo. It’s just like Grind City underneath. Up to and including the assassins, I bet. And I don’t wanna face them without backup. Not when it’s not my turf.”
Fair point. Combo shoulders his g-blaster and hurries after her. Still glances from side to side when he can, though, to check out the sudden views of tiny temples or single English words.
eight nosy parkers
[Title] Knowledge is Power
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Matsuda's pretty nosy, but he can admit it.
Matsuda knows he's kind of nosy.
Well, okay, but he wouldn’t call it that. He’s not, like, the kind of person who looks at other people’s phones if they’re out of the room, or...
All right, he has been known to listen at doors but only in pursuit of evidence. Only for the sake of a case. He hasn’t eavesdropped on private conversations for non-professional reasons since he was a kid.
And yeah, he probably does ask too many personal questions, but that’s not… that’s not because he’s trying to get information out of people. He just talks and he talks about stuff that interests him and a lot of the time he does want to know what other people are thinking or who they fancy or what mistakes they made because then he’ll feel he’s the same as them. Sometimes he feels like everyone he spends time with these days, their heads are nothing but a really neat filing system inside so they can just put away all the stuff left over from school or college or a really awkward date. Whereas with him everything's still lying all over his mind.
But if he asks and someone tells him to back off, he will! Okay, with some people he might laugh at them a little if they're really grouchy or they clearly have an embarrassing secret, but he doesn’t want to make people feel bad.
Still.
If pushed - and this would only be by someone smart and kind of scary, like Ryuzaki - if pushed, he’d probably admit he doesn’t just enjoy hearing other people talking like he thinks. He likes knowing stuff, too. People like Ryuzaki, and Raito, and the Chief, really smart people who are amazing at solving crimes, they can sum people up in a few sentences and somehow it makes everything make sense. Matsuda would like to be the one to whom everything makes sense, and knowing who people are and what they're thinking is the only way he can see to ever become that.
Which, okay, is nosiness. But no one around him is as interested in him as he is in them, so he figures he can keep it a secret.
[Title] Counter Culture
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Mew likes the chance to spy.
One of the best things about being a rudie, in Mew's opinion, is the chance to snoop.
“Really?” Gum says, giving her a what look as she sprays a brisk line of white paint across the sunny concrete wall. “Like, not the catching sweet air, or the sticking it to the man, or the not having to wear a uniform all day? It's watching the rat race?”
Mew sticks out her tongue. “Hey, how many times've you jumped onto a roof in Kogane-cho and heard someone having a massive row with their boyfriend? It's like Jerry Springer live.”
“I once jumped onto a roof in Kogane-cho and heard someone having a massive something else from her boyfriend. House was shaking. I nearly fell off the roof.”
“Um, ew. Not that kind of snooping. Just...” She stops, frowns. The words twist away from her, so she carries on painting. She means just that she can sit on someone's roof and hear 'em talking, even if she can't hear what's being said. She can grind along guttering and glance in at people's studies and offices and kitchens, and see someone making coffee or whispering a secret, or on their computer typing up something she knows nothing about. She can be tagging up the billboard above the cinema in Genkijomae Square and right below her feet are there'll be a group of friends chatting about how they liked the movie.
“I dunno. You can watch people and they feel like they're just like you, you know? Like they're all different underneath too.”
“Yeah, I don't get that,” Gum said, skating back a little, tilting her head to study the paint job. “I'm more about the having skates lets me run the hell away. People do my head in.”
Mew doesn't say how that's the other part of it, that before she had skates and the guts to express herself through criminal activity she just watched people and it felt like most of 'em weren't like her at all. Now, when she can get through large parts of the city without having to touch the ground, she can look at the others all around her without feeling she can't breathe.
[Title] Another Albion
[Rating] G
[Fandom] Merlin / classic!Who
[Notes/Summary] Prompted by sabethea, who asked for Merlin as the Doctor's companion.
Back in the TARDIS, Merlin leans over and tries to catch his breath over the groaning and shrieking as the Doctor's ship starts to fade away.
“You know,” he says, “I think I've done more running since I met you than I had in my whole life beforehand.”
The Doctor isn't listening - or is choosing not to hear - running around the centre of the TARDIS, pressing parts of it, looking at flickering lights. And as usual, while Merlin is covered in grime and dust from the dash down the hillside, the Doctor's cream-white clothes are unmarked and he even still has the hat. Merlin asked him once if it was magic. Nonsense, the Doctor said. Keeping a firm grip on one's hat has nothing to do with magic. It's simply common sense.
Merlin doesn't like talking about magic around the Doctor. Partly it's habit from years of not talking about magic to the wrong people. Partly...
The Doctor travels. That was why Merlin agreed to go along with him. He would have gone with anyone who had offered to take him somewhere else, away from Camelot, away from all the death. The fact that the Doctor can take you further away than probably anyone else in the world was an unexpected bit of luck.
The fact that the places the Doctor seems to go always involve running and strange beings and magic that Merlin has never even dreamt of is... well, it isn't luck exactly, Merlin thinks he'd rather like to experience a quiet life, but -
He thinks of Camelot and the years he spent there and every memory hurts. He tries to think of himself apart from Camelot, without Camelot, without Arthur, and he can't. And then they open the doors of the TARDIS and he sees people who've never heard Arthur's name. Once or twice the Doctor has pointed to the sky, to one tiny spark of light, and said, “There, that's your planet - second to the left.” When that happens, Merlin can almost believe the world - the world beyond the world - is big enough for him to live forever in it.
They open the doors of the TARDIS and they step out into places that he doesn't have the words to describe. People doing things that he would call magic and everyone does them and no one blinks. People he can scare if he unleashes his power and people who laugh and throw it back at him. People he didn't originally realise were people, that he thought were beasts, with fur or tusks or fangs. People who've seen the same things as him. People who understand why, afterwards, you might want to bury yourself in the lives of others.
The Doctor watches it all as if nothing can surprise him. Sometimes Merlin wants to tell him everything and hear him make sense of it. The Doctor can make sense of anything. But something always stops him. He's spent a lot of time being the one watching, the one trying to make things better even if no one realises it. He is pretty sure the Doctor's been doing that much longer. And is probably much better at it. The Doctor would have found a way to save Arthur, whatever destiny said.
“Where are we going now?” he says. “And is it going to involve more running?”
“You shouldn't develop an aversion to exercise,” the Doctor says. “It's unhealthy.”
Merlin sighs. “You mean, yes, it's going to involve more running. Can you narrow it down at all?”
They land with a jolt as if they've been set down by a giant hand. The Doctor studies one of the many devices in front of him, proclaims, “Seas of crystal. Three moons. Mosquito problems,” and strides towards the door. Merlin follows, and, as usual, his breath catches as the door is pulled open. That first glimpse of something so different is always worth it. As long as he stays the one watching.
[Title] Sizing Up the Competition
[Rating] PG-13
[Fandom] Battle Royale (manga)
[Notes/Summary] Shogo Kawada watches the rest of Class B, even though he didn't intend to.
Shogo figured his new classmates would be so much wallpaper to him; after all, he'd managed to gun down a large chunk of his previous junior high class, even some of the ones he'd grown up on the same street as, even the one who'd meant everything... so why would you spend weeks developing attachments to a new lot when you knew what was going to happen?
But he finds himself noticing them anyway. Keeping an ear open. Watching the ties of friendship, love or lust, bitter rivalry threading themselves across the classroom. And every so often, when his mind's wandering, he catches himself thinking he's gonna crack in the first hour or she's cannon fodder or (less often) they'd better watch out for her, anyone can see she'll be playing before they even say Go or he could actually stand a chance, he's got some decent moves. It's pretty sick, but he's figuring, by this point, that he's pretty sick, and it'd suck to get gunned down on the first day by someone he underestimated. So he keeps watching. And watching gives him something to do. The last thing he needs is for his thoughts to wander any further.
[Title] Bunking Together
[Fandom] new!Who / classic!Who
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Amy and Rory, and Jamie and Zoe, compare notes. Prompted by sabethea: "The Doctor - blighting sex lives since ???"
Trapped in a cave-in, with nothing else to do but wait until the Doctor - the Doctors - find them, Amy elects to make conversation. And quite frankly, if they might be all going to die, she doesn't see the point of wasting time not being nosy.
“So,” she says, into the dark, stuffy air, “You two are... together?”
She can practically hear Jamie blush, but Zoe says brightly, “If you mean are we sexually intimate, you're quite right. Jamie is a very good-looking young man and I find our cultural differences extremely interesting, too -”
“Zoe, she asked if we were sweethearts,” Jamie mutters. “She didn't need the... details.”
From Amy's other side, Rory clears his throat, and says, “Not that I'm asking for more... details, but... okay, does yours have the... bunk bed thing?”
A puzzled pause.
“I don't think so,” Zoe says. “Remind me, is that the ones with the ladder or the ones which walk around at night?”
“The... the ones with the ladder,” Amy says after a second's appalled horror at the thought of the other option.
“You have beds with ladders where you come from?” Jamie says. “Are they so high you can't get into them? I've heard rich folks have beds with steps to climb into, but... that shouldn't be a problem for, ah, for...”
A few moments' digression follow while they clarify the definition of a bunk bed.
“Oh, no,” Zoe says. “Ours hasn't noticed we sleep in the same room now, as far as I can tell. Not that I think he would mind. No, now I think about it, he has noticed. He asked me why on earth I had moved into Jamie's room and wouldn't the snoring keep me awake.Tiredness can kill, he reminded me.”
“Ours wasn't so bad, really,” Amy says. “I made a... firm request and he listened to it. No more bunk beds.”
“No,” Rory said. “A bed big enough for both of us, raised six foot off the ground on ladders. One day I'm going to forget that detail and break a leg falling out of it.”
“I think it's yours has seen too much more,” Jamie says. “He's getting too many ideas. And he had enough of those already.”
“Oh, well.” Zoe is standing up; they can hear the scatter of stones. “None of us are travelling with them for sexual purposes, are we? Perhaps we should keep them away from studying any more furniture, though. We've all got quite enough to contend with as it is.”
[Title] Constants
[Fandom] Akira
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Kaneda likes finding out about people. Prompted by herrdeath, who asked for Kaneda/Tetsuo pre-canon friendship.
Kaneda isn't exactly a nosy parker but he likes finding out about people. It makes you look smart if you know who people are, and it's often kind of good to know what they'll do. Like you don't wanna end up in a room alone with this kid, or you know that one will do your homework for you if you get him sweets. This teacher won't notice if you're talking, while that one will throw chalk at you and yell, but nothing else, and another one will make you stay behind after class and do extra cleaning duty.
So he's looking round the door when Ms Anno brings this new kid down the corridor. Same age as Kaneda, good, there are too many kids much bigger than him. Looking sad, looking really sad. Kaneda's not sure about the sad. He's not very good at making people not be sad and mostly he gets yelled at for it when he was only trying to help. Some of the big kids are saying this boy's mum and dad just left, just went away and never came back, but Kaneda's not sure he believes it and he doesn't really care anyway, who cares about not having a mum and dad?
But he starts keeping an eye out for the new kid because no one else is, everyone else says he looks like a loser or stupid, and Kaneda wants to know if he really is. So, on the day the mean kids start knocking the new boy around in the playground, Kaneda is there, watching from behind the jungle gym, and when the others are gone, he finds the broken robot toy, goes to give it back.
Kaneda's had friends before, course he has, but not like one best friend. Tetsuo's his best friend even though Tetsuo is kind of scaredy sometimes and cries a lot. Kaneda is okay with that because he always knows how to fix things. Also, Tetsuo thinks Kaneda's really smart the way he knows stuff and can come up with ideas. Not many people think Kaneda's smart.
Kaneda likes finding out about people, but as he gets older, a lot of them are kind of boring. Boring and all the same, all giving him dirty looks and acting like wanting to have fun is a massive crime. Tetsuo isn't boring. Tetsuo's just always there. If Kaneda thinks about it at all, he thinks he knows all there is to know about Tetsuo.
Much later, he realises how wrong he is, but it's too late by that point.
[Title] What I Never Do
[Fandom] Akira (movie)
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Kaori is never nosy. Except this time. Prompted by herrdeath, who requested some Tetsuo/Kaori.
Kaori is never nosy. Never. If people think you're snooping then, at best, they yell at you and order you to butt out of their business.
Kaori can't stop wondering about Tetsuo Shima. Sitting in the dorm with her elbows on the windowsill, trying to spot him among the kids playing football or shoving each other over. When she does spot him, in the far corner, drawing with chalk on the tarmac, she feels as shy as if he knows she's looking. She's all red and covering her mouth even though there's no one else here.
Kaori never asks anyone questions unless she's supposed to.
Kaori takes a deep breath and at dinner she says to the girl next to her who is talking about the boys, Do you know Tetsuo Shima? And the girl rolls her eyes and says, God, he's such a dork. Kaneda's all right - I mean he's up himself but he's all right - but Tetsuo acts like a freakin' little kid. Kaori has no idea how to stop being a little kid herself, so it's like someone's actually said, He's been asking about you too.
Kaori likes it best when she can be on her own, in one of the empty classrooms or in the dorm.
Kaori goes outside at lunchtime and stands by the chain-link fence. She puts her fingers through the squares as if she's going to start climbing. She doesn't start climbing, but she sees Tetsuo on the other side, leaning against the wall, watching the kids like she watches. Like he understands being scared. He feels her eyes on him, looks round.
Kaori is too shy to even look at boys.
Kaori smiles, digging her fingers into the chain-link so she can pretend her hands aren't shaking. After a few moments, Tetsuo slowly smiles back.
[Title] Tokyo Street View
[Fandom] Jet Set Radio
[Rating] G
[Notes/Summary] Combo can't get over how different Tokyo is.
Japan’s so different from the US but in a way like you don’t notice unless you’re looking - like, if you sleepwalk through it you feel you're somewhere you know, but once you start focusing on the details you realise you're the other side of the world. So, Combo’s looking. That’s tiring him out even more’n the jet lag. In Grind City he’d go ‘bout the day with it all round him like always and you only took notice when something was off. Like ugly new posters up on walls. Like psychos in suits trying to kill you.
Japan - well, Tokyo, anyway - every sign’s a picture. There’s music and chimes in the corner of his hearing every other step. People talking and it's like stones or marbles clatterin’ everywhere, he’s not gettin’ a word. Even places like Baskin-Robbins and McDonalds, you see the logo but then you see the menu or the labels on food and it’s all squares and lines. Like you're dreaming, or you forgot how to read.
“Close your mouth, you’ll get flies,” Cube says, prodding him in the arm.
“C’mon, kid, this is blowing my mind! Plus, they ain’t exactly gonna think I’m from round here.”
A bunch of schoolgirls in sailor suits walk past, chattering, looking like paper cutout schoolgirls, like world cinema DVD covers.
“We need to stop playing tourist and find these GGs. Don’t fall for it, Combo. It’s just like Grind City underneath. Up to and including the assassins, I bet. And I don’t wanna face them without backup. Not when it’s not my turf.”
Fair point. Combo shoulders his g-blaster and hurries after her. Still glances from side to side when he can, though, to check out the sudden views of tiny temples or single English words.